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Summer at Pemberley
“[Elizabeth] looked forward with delight to the time when they should be removed from society so little pleasing to either, to all the comfort and elegance of their family party at Pemberley."
Jane Austen
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It is the first summer at Pemberley since Darcy and Elizabeth wed and they will play host to some expected and some unexpected guests.
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The world would intrude on their idyllic
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"That will be all," Darcy said.
As the servants departed they closed the door upon the breakfast room and Darcy turned to his wife and watched with fresh fascination as she poured him a cup of coffee. He wondered for not the first time that he should find such delight in such ordinary activity. For while the private privileges of wedded intimacy were indisputably manifold in pleasures and rewards, these several months into their marriage he found almost a greater enchantment and fascination in that knowledge which revealed not the intimacy of loving, but the intimacy of living: the manner in which she slightly pursed her lips when pouring tea or coffee; the way in which she tilted her head when reading her correspondence, and the slow, careful gait of her hand while writing the same; the near delirium with which her lovely visage was infused when she inhaled a flower’s fragrance; the extra brilliancy in her marvelous eyes when the day dawned bright; how she bit the corner of her lip when she could not decide from a selection of books; the peculiar pleasure she took in stealing sips of his brandy while persistently denying any inclination for the same; the manner in which she discreetly rolled back her head and stretched her supple neck when the night was long and she was tired. Watching as she finished preparing his coffee and as she fixed now her own cup of tea Darcy mused upon the truth that with each small and daily charm that he observed she was every day burrowing herself deeper into his heart.
Grown accustomed now to her husband's penetrating, frequent and silent observation, Elizabeth did not disregard said observation, and she was, in point of fact, pleased more then not by its continued performance.
"Your coffee will grow cold, my dear, will you not sit?"
Taking his seat Darcy merely said, "Thank you," before happily turning his attentions to the plentiful breakfast before him.
"Today promises to be another fine day," Elizabeth continued, as she spread her toast with strawberry preserve. "The remainder of Georgiana's journey should be quite comfortable. In her letter she sounded very content. I am so pleased she had such an enjoyable visit with your aunt."
"She has long been a little afraid of my uncle, but with the Earl away and only my aunt for companionship I am sure we will indeed find her content with her visit. Colonel Fitzwilliam has always been a favorite with Georgiana and his easy temper is very much like his mother's."
"I would imagine so, she was very kind to me when we were in Town. So warm and welcoming."
Darcy looked displeased as he remarked almost coldly, and certainly defensively, "As opposed to others, you mean?"
They occupied together the corner of the vast table, allowing Elizabeth to easily stretch out her hand and place it on Darcy's arm, giving it an affectionate squeeze. "I meant to make no such intimation. I thought you understood that I am not at all discontented by how I have been received by any member of your family. While it gives me pleasure that with Lady Margaret I sense there can, with time, be some degree of confidence, I concede it was more than I anticipated. The Earl, your cousin Edward and his wife were perhaps not warm in their reception, but I imagine they are simply not particularly warm by nature. They were, however, perfectly civil."
"Unlike Lady Catherine."
"I have said before that while her coming to see me at Longbourn was a great impertinence, it was not, viewed dispassionately, wholly unexplainable. I do wish you would reconsider and attempt some reconciliation."
Darcy sighed heavily. "I should not have mentioned her. Pray, it is a lovely morning, let us not discuss this matter again. I understand that you would wish for me to reconcile with her, you have made that plain in the past, but I cannot find it in me to reconcile, not after the reprehensible sentiments she expressed in that unconscionable letter. Can we not simply agree to differ on this matter?"
Elizabeth observed the pronounced frown that sat upon her husband’s face as he recalled all that surrounded the ruptured relations with his aunt and was certain she must persuade him to heal the breach. Now, however, was not the moment; he was not presently inclined for such discussion, and, in truth, neither was she.
"Very well, let us leave off for the time. Now tell me instead, are you not eager to see your sister?"
As Elizabeth asked her question she took a small bite from her toast and a small drop of the strawberry preserve stuck to her lip. As Elizabeth continued with her breakfast, quite unaware of the less then elegant offending strawberry preserve adorning her lip, Darcy's frown was quickly replaced with a smile as he reached across with his napkin and whipped away the offending drop of preserve. Elizabeth blushed becomingly.
"I must confess," Darcy answered at last, "that I am not altogether eager for her arrival."
"Fitzwilliam Darcy, you surprise me!"
"I, of course, am eager to see her settled at long last here at Pemberley and I am eager for you and Georgiana to continue to understand each other, to see strengthened the regard that so happily and unaffectedly began while we were together in London." Darcy pushed his plate aside and reached across the table to take Elizabeth's hand, enveloping its small softness within his own two strong hands. "But I do confess, Elizabeth, that this time we have shared here at Pemberley, all alone, is not something I am eager to forsake. Particularly as once Georgiana returns home she will swiftly be followed by far too many guests. What were we thinking extending so many invitations? In truth, I am not at all disposed to sharing your company with others."
"That is very ungenerous of you, my dear," Elizabeth replied playfully. "Particularly as you have had me all to yourself all these weeks now and you know how I long to see Jane, who I have not seen for these many months."
"You see!" Darcy exclaimed. "My worst fears are sure to be realized!"
"And what are your worst fears?"
"These!" he responded wryly. "All her sweetness notwithstanding, Georgiana can be rather demanding in her attentions when she so chooses, and most particularly when she has just returned from a visit of some sort. And then your beloved Jane will arrive shortly thereafter and you shall have no time or inclination for my company at all and I shall find myself reduced to the ignominy of suffering jealously of your sister. Naturally, we shall concurrently have other guests who must be attended to and you will of course continue with your visits to our tenants. And I mustn't forget that with summer upon us we will have all manner of obligations with our neighbors. I will be reduced to having you alone to myself for no more then a half hour each day."
Elizabeth laughed gaily at the sight of her infamously severe Darcy pouting as petulantly as a small boy denied his favorite toy. "That is all perhaps for the best," she replied teasingly. "For too great a period alone with me might grow tiresome after a time."
"Never!" he responded as he pulled her from her seat, around the table and onto his lap. "You are well aware that I can be a very selfish, very spoiled man."
"Yes. It has been plainly established that you are rather too accustomed to having your own way, Mr. Darcy." She smiled as she caressed his face affectionately.
"That is indisputably so. And I should have you comprehend that I have grown quite accustomed to our time alone. Our long walks about the park, our quiet evenings sitting together, reading, conversing. I take great pleasure in having you play and sing for me and only me, and I quite enjoy having all your witty, adorable impertinence for myself alone. But what shall drive me quite mad is that once Georgiana arrives I shall no longer be able to kiss you at my own leisure."
And with that Darcy began to kiss his wife's hands, her shoulder, her neck, her lips, all the while murmuring playfully: "You are sweet and delicious and I have been able to freely love you these precious weeks that we have been alone, with no concern for what is right and proper or for who may see me kiss you with all the passion your mere presence elicits in your hopelessly besotted husband. What will I do now when I walk into your sitting room because I long to kiss you, only to find you in company, as I surely will, and so find I am only permitted to bow reverently over your delicate little hand? Tell me, my Lizzy, how shall I endure such suffering?"
Laughing at his delightful playfulness, she responded teasingly, "What would all your dignified acquaintances say to see you so?"
"To see me so? How so?"
"So very lively and unreserved."
"They shall never have a word to say about the matter, for it is only when alone with you that I can be such, that I feel myself unfettered, expansive, if you will. Does that displease you?"
"No, it does not. I would not wish you to all at once become as unrestrained in company as Bingley. Charming as Mr. Bingley is and as delightful a husband as he is for my dearest Jane, I would not have you look the fool in love for all the world. Let us keep this enchanting foolery as our own precious treasure."
"That, my dear little wife, is one of your most charming characteristics. You are so wholly unsentimental."
"Unsentimental? I do not know that I like that at all. It sounds almost as though I were unfeeling and aloof. Cold."
Darcy smiled broadly and shook his head. "Such willful misapprehension!" he said. Adding provocatively, as his finger traced her collarbone, "Do you not think that I would be intimately acquainted with such a dreadful demeanor if it were so?"
"Perhaps," she replied archly.
"I would not have you sentimental, Elizabeth. I find sentimentality rather suspect; a particularly impetuous, careless sort of sensibility. Indeed, you are as unlikely as I to give your affections rashly, yet when you do give your affections, you give them faithfully, unconditionally, and without undue mawkishness." He grew serious and taking her face squarely within his grasp he continued in a quiet, adoring tone. "I, most fortunate man that I am, have by some happy means won your frank, ardent, devoted and yes, entirely unsentimental love. And I would have it no other way."
"That is a very pretty description of my love. However, it discloses such an excess of confidence, Mr. Darcy. In truth, how can you be sure that I love you so beautifully?"
"Minx!" He laughed as he looked into her vibrant, joyful eyes—such luminous, mesmerizing eyes, he thought. Placing temperate, yet lingering kisses on her neck, he spoke with a tenderness that was palpable: “I can be sure because you show me. You show me in the manner in which you kiss me, in the manner in which you touch me, look at me, care for me and tease me. I know because you show me, generously and forthrightly.”
"I show you?" she replied weakly, not a little affected by his attentions.
"You do."
"No more then do you, my love," she whispered in return. And, dear reader, as you could well imagine, they then indulged in some such shows of affection that would be, as Darcy had earlier regretted, quite inappropriate in the company of Georgiana. It was a sweetly mischievous kiss unluckily interrupted by a knock on the breakfast room door. Elizabeth returned somewhat unhappily to her seat at the table, but not before, with a charming arching of her eyebrow and pouting of her lips, straightening Darcy's slightly askew cravat.
"Enter," he commanded.
"Begging your pardon Mr. Darcy, your steward has arrived and says he has a matter of some unexpected urgency to discuss with you. He will await you in the library."
"Very well, Mrs. Reynolds. Please inform Mr. Fairfax that I will be with him shortly."
"Yes sir," she responded with a curtsey, exiting the room and being quite sure to close the door behind her. The staff had quickly ascertained, when Mrs. Darcy was first introduced to Pemberley before the Christmas season, that the master had made, rather surprisingly to some, what was universally described as a love match, and as such they quickly modified their service appropriately. When Mr. and Mrs. Darcy were in residence, open doors in occupied rooms where not as frequent as in the past.
"I suppose I must see what Mr. Fairfax is about," Darcy remarked with no small irritation as Mrs. Reynolds left the room. "However," he continued as he rose and walked to a small table across the room. "Not before I give you this."
Returning to her side, he handed Elizabeth a prettily wrapped package to her great surprise.
"And what is the occasion for a gift?" she inquired.
"I have told you before, I will spoil you with gifts whether you desire them or not, and for no particular reason at all."
"I do not need gifts."
"Yes, just my devotion, is that not what you said the first time I gave you a gift? At any rate, nobody needs gifts. I defy you, be that as it may, to not enjoy them when I present them to you."
"That I cannot do."
"I thought not. Now, my little minx, open your gift."
Leaning over he kissed her on the cheek and smiled expectantly as she removed the wrappings. Inside Elizabeth found a small music box whose top was decorated with inlaid mother-of-pearl in a very pretty motif of a violin and flowers. When she opened the box Darcy observed with pleasure her small, delighted smile as the sounds of a sweet, languid song escaped the confines of the box.
"Oh William!" Elizabeth cried. "I have never seen anything so charming, so delightful. Thank you, I shall treasure it."
As she rose from her seat, he wrapped his arms around her and enfolded her into his embrace. "Elizabeth, I would wish that every time you open this box and hear its music you would recall these weeks when we have had this time alone, during which we have had the opportunity to establish the foundations of our happiness."
"I would beg to differ, my love, the foundations of our happiness were established well before we were wed, when we learned to be frank and open with one another, to trust and respect as well as to love each other. Yet I will grant you that these weeks have been precious and I shall treasure them always; that you would wish to as well moves me beyond measure. But now we are being sentimental."
"Not sentimental, but truthful in our sentiments. There is a distinction."
"Before I make a muddle of that distinction then, perhaps you had best see what Mr. Fairfax so urgently requires."
"Perhaps I had better," he responded quietly.
As Darcy made to leave the breakfast room to see Mr. Fairfax he paused as he took the handle of the door and turned to Elizabeth. He gave her one long parting look and both understood that these precious weeks of private communion had now come to an end. Georgiana would arrive in the afternoon and the others would follow soon thereafter. The world would intrude on their idyllic. And as with a warm smile he turned and walked away Elizabeth mused that indeed it had been an idyllic. They had loved and lived without formality, without ceremony, without hesitation and they had come to value and understand each other more deeply. She suspected she would be always grateful to Lady Margaret, who, by inviting Georgiana to stay in Town with her for those additional weeks, had given them the gift of intimate, uninterrupted time. Elizabeth felt the benefit of this gift particularly as she recalled Jane's letters, so filled with daily visits from Longbourn and other well-intentioned Meryton neighbors. But for now, neither Jane's letters, nor Georgiana's imminent arrival, nor the anticipated summer months filled with guests and obligations would dominate her thoughts.
Elizabeth walked across the room to the open window and looked out on the lovely park as it stretched out in the morning sun. She looked down at the music box in her hands, traced the intricacies of the design and lifted the top. The sweet, languid music escaped from the box and she smiled. Elizabeth was happy; happy as she had never before been. Darcy was in all manners the husband she had anticipated he would be and yet, surprisingly more, surprisingly different as well.
By Elizabeth's Persuasion
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Darcy had spent the better part of the morning in his study completing estate business and correspondence he wished concluded before the arrival of the Bingley party on the morrow. His tasks successfully accomplished he rose from his meticulously ordered desk and stretched; he thought he might go for a ride and get some exercise, but then thought the better of it as the morning was nearly past. He walked leisurely to the large window that overlooked the trout stream and leaned his tall form against the frame of the opened window. After two days of rain, it was a glorious morning. The sun was bright, the breeze was mild and the sky a clear, cloudless blue. The prospect from his study was one of his favorites. It was not the most expansive, like that to be had from the master bedchambers or the public rooms, but was instead almost intimate. From here he could see not only the gentle course of the trout stream that had provided such delightful distractions since boyhood, but also the lovely canopied pathway that led from the rose garden to the cutting gardens where he could still recall his mother selecting flowers for the house. As a boy he had occasionally accompanied her, only to sit in quiet observation of her occupation, participating in the stillness with which the household tacitly surrounded her in consequence of her delicate and timid disposition, so unlike the robust and vibrant disposition of his father. They had been, in character if not in station, improbably matched; respectful, loyal, dedicated to one another, certainly, and yet he could not recall any particular warmth.
He remained at his window and indolently considered the lovely morning. After a time he saw, under the canopied pathway and coming from the direction of the cutting garden, his wife and sister, walking arm in arm. Elizabeth wore a simple, white muslin gown and dangled a basket filled with yellow flowers from her hand. She was looking tenderly at Georgiana while she, in turn, appeared to be conversing enthusiastically. He did not know which to admire more, his unaffectedly lovely wife or his surprisingly grown sister. He settled easily on admiring them both and enjoying the gratifying affability of their intercourse. For although he did greedily lament the loss of Elizabeth's exclusive companionship since Georgiana's return, he nonetheless took great pleasure in each exchange that he witnessed between them. He could see in Georgiana's every expression that she was sincerely delighted in having a sister and a confidant. And he likewise perceived that Elizabeth offered to Georgiana the same tender sisterly devotion that was Jane's and he treasured Elizabeth the more for this natural easiness of confidence that he had so often felt unable to provide his beloved sister. Their mutual regard was sincere and increased daily and for this he was grateful.
The sound of Elizabeth's laughter rose into the air and drifted toward his window. As that now familiar and beloved sound reached his ears he did not move and he did not smile, yet his entire spirit was pervaded with a sense of peace that was visible upon his countenance. That he should have found the source of such peace--this incomparable woman--in a village of no consequence and in the midst of an often impossibly careless family, remained, for Darcy, an unspoken source of astonishment.
Elizabeth and Georgiana neared the house and Elizabeth pulled her arm from Georgiana's, raised her hand to the ribbon tied neatly beneath her chin and pulled on it. Releasing the bow, she removed the bonnet from her head and revealed her glowing and smiling face to Darcy's secret observation. She was listening attentively to Georgiana's conversation and as they turned toward the house Elizabeth stepped absent mindedly, her foot falling into a small puddle in the pathway, not yet dried by the morning's sun. On his sister's face Darcy could read Georgiana's immediate concern for the soiled hem and on Elizabeth's her evident lack of concern for the same. He could not hear the words from their lips, but imagined Elizabeth telling Georgiana that it was nothing to be bothered about.
As Darcy watched them he unexpectedly discovered the answer to Elizabeth's once proffered inquiry: when did he fall in love with her? At the time she had playfully made the inquiry he had responded that he could not know when he had begun, and yet as he watched her now he suddenly understood precisely when he had begun. For as clearly as he watched her walking into the house now, the hem of her white muslin slightly soiled, he saw her walking into Netherfield, her petticoat six inches deep in mud. Elizabeth had stood before the censorious Netherfield party defiant, independent, challenging, and bravely impassive to their disapprobation. Bingley's sisters had said she looked almost wild, and indeed she had: her cheeks flushed, her eyes particularly bright, her hair tousled, her entire appearance in minor disarray, her petticoat infamously sullied. In that one singular moment, however, he had seen her--her character, her person, her spirit--entirely stripped of civility's guise and he had been overcome with an unfamiliar, profound admiration which he had swiftly done all in his power to deny, as if to flee from the consequent want, need, desire, longing that welled uncontrollably within his breast. How could he, then, when she had inquired of the same, have not know that had been the moment when he had lost his heart? Perhaps because while his every instinct had reached for her, his head, his rational self had not similarly done so until after her rejection of his hand at Hunsford. That morning in the Netherfield breakfast room he had pushed aside the moment's insight as quickly as it had captured him. But now when he was in every respect so happily, passionately, rationally hers he could recognize the truth of that passing moment's revelation. He could never have dreamt then, bewitched and troubled as he was, that in that daring, poised, pretty country girl with the muddied petticoat he had stumbled upon the very thing he had never thought to want: his soul's companion. She had reached him, touched him in some restless, lonely, secret portion of his being and filled what he had not consciously recognized was empty.
A knock on the door roused Darcy from his revelry. Matthews entered the study and delivered the days post. Bringing his thoughts back to the present and the practical, Darcy stood at his desk and quickly reviewed the post, stopping at one with handwriting grown lately familiar. He opened it and found a short and in all ways satisfactory correspondence.
June 18__
Gracechurch Street, London
Dear Mr. Darcy, Mrs. Gardiner and I have received your letter and find once again your power of persuasion too daunting to dismiss. While Mrs. Gardiner had indeed indicated to Lizzy that my business would not allow time away this summer, we relent to your argument and your plotting. We will make the effort you so generously demand of us and we will be at Pemberley on the appointed day. It will, however, be a visit of necessarily short duration and so the children will not accompany us. One point that puzzles me, however, is why these plans must remain secret. Pray, enlighten me.
Yours etc.
Edward Gardiner
"Excellent!" Darcy cried, as he sat down at his desk and quickly scribed a response.
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